Lin Biao

Lin Biao

or

Lin Piao

(both: lĭn byou), 1908–71, Chinese Communist general and political leader. Lin was trained at Whampoa Academy, and during the Northern ExpeditionNorthern Expedition,in modern Chinese history, the military campaign by which the Kuomintang party overthrew the warlord-backed Beijing government and established a new government at Nanjing......Click the link for more information. he rose to company commander in the KuomintangKuomintang[Chin.,=national people's party] (KMT), Chinese and Taiwanese political party. Sung Chiao-jen organized the party in 1912, under the nominal leadership of Sun Yat-sen, to succeed the Revolutionary Alliance......Click the link for more information. army. After the Kuomintang-Communist split in 1927, he became one of Zhu DeZhu Deor Chu Teh, 1886–1976, Chinese Communist soldier and leader. He was graduated (1911) from the Yunnan military academy and served in various positions with armies loyal to Sun Yat-sen. Stationed in Sichuan prov., he was a warlord from 1916 to 1920......Click the link for more information.'s leading military aides. His skill as a tactician earned him the command of a Red Army corps, and after the long marchlong march,Chin., Changzheng, the journey of c.6,000 mi (9,660 km) undertaken by the Red Army of China in 1934–35. When their Jiangxi prov. Soviet base was encircled by the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek, some 90,000 men and women broke through the siege (Oct......Click the link for more information., he headed the Red Academy at Yan'an. In 1947–48 he commanded the Communist military offensive in the northeast against Chiang Kai-shek. Lin was appointed defense minister of the people's republic in 1959. In 1966 he displaced Liu ShaoqiLiu Shaoqior Liu Shao-ch'i, 1898?–1969, Chinese Communist political leader. Liu joined (1920) a Comintern organization in Shanghai, where he studied Russian. While in Moscow in 1921, he joined the Chinese Communist party......Click the link for more information. as the second-ranking member of the Chinese Communist party, a position that made him Mao Zedong's heir apparent. A supporter of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Lin mysteriously died in an airplane crash in Mongolia (1971). His death, however, was not officially disclosed until 1972, when the Chinese press also reported on his alleged attempt to overthrow the government shortly before the crash.

Lin Piao

, Lin Biao

1908--71, Chinese Communist general and statesman. He became minister of defence (1959) and second in rank to Mao Tse-tung (1966). He fell from grace and is reported to have died in an air crash while attempting to flee to the Soviet Union

Xinhua, run by the same Communist Party that Mao founded, called Zhang part of the ''Gang of Four'' and of a ''counter-revolutionary clique'' that included Mao's wife Jiang Qing and former army commander Lin Biao.

Professor MacFarquhar offers new insights into the roles played by a compliant and subservient Zhou En-lai, a loyal Lin Biao, and others among the top echelon who attempted to survive in the face of increasingly unpredictable manoeuvres by Mao, as he prepared for his Cultural Revolution.

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